[Puu]

Originally Posted by YayPepsi

I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing though. His friends saw how much he was suffering and they wanted to help him. Maybe they made it too easy on him, but if I had a friend like Rin who was clearly having some sort of break down and was crashing right in front of my eyes, I would be concerned and do anything I could to help him out. The Iwatobi team thought letting him swim with them would help him, and they were right.

Yeah, it's not a necessarily bad thing.... for the people making the sacrifice and those who contributed positively to his closure. And I think that's biggest problem because, unlike Rin, these guys' issues didn't have the same level of exposure as Rin's did. With the way the show underlined Rin's many many issues, you'd think he'd get a satisfying ending where he does something to deal with his issues (beyond verbal and physical violence) and when that's not enough, the others pitch in. But that's not what happens and it just feels like twelve episodes of watching his manpain in action for nothing because he relapses in the last episode and goes back to "I'm going to quit swimming", "Nobody can help me.", "Shut up" mentality and the series handwaves this all with a the sacrifice from the other characters.

I feel like throughout the anime, Rin was trying to fix himself. It's just that he was really clueless about how to do so. He thought beating Haru would fix him, and make himself feel better, and he was wrong. Then he tried signing up for the relay but that fell through because he was too focused on his old teammates. The effort was there, but he was directing it the wrong way and just made himself feel worse. He ran away in the end, and yeah, that doesn't really do much to help the situation...but I find that realistic.

I suppose it is... in a way, at least Rin's reactions anyway. I don't think normal people would put up with Rin's jerk attitude the way they did in the anime

I think it's a possibility. The kind of issues Rin was facing don't go away overnight. He may be on the road to recovery, and it seems like he's doing better now, but who knows down the road? I think his low self-esteem will be something he'll have to battle his entire life, hopefully with the support of his friends. But I'm not sure Kyoani will go that route.

I was thinking that...

I personally hope next season I won't have to watch Rin's manpain for extended periods, though. It was just a bit too much in the first season. It was like, "Yes, yay, you're done with angsting about losing to Haru now you can- what? Now you're angsting about your dad? Oh, you're okay about that now-- whoa, now you're angsting about losing your old team mates? Now, you're on your lack of skills again. Uh-huh."

I wouldn't be averse to them doing parodies of Rin's love for angsting about things though...